Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Safe in Miami

Well, dad decided to join me for dinner, though I think he regretted it afterwards. We ate in the hotel cafe. He got the potato soup (which he said was cold) and the pizza margarita (also cold). I had the caeser salad and the club sandwich. It's pretty hard to screw up a club sandwich).

Afterwards, we went back upstairs to pack. No English-language news (only repeats of CNN's Haiti telethon), so we turned in early. Another fitful night's sleep for me, waking every two to three hours. When I woke at 5:40, I decided to get up and get ready before our wake-up call at 6 am. By 6:15 we were back at the cafe for breakfast, and by 7:00 we were loaded onto our bus (there were about 12 of us from the celebrity cruise flying out on AA this morning).

When we got to Quito we could see a very large group of Quebecois college students waiting to check in ahead of us. Luckily, dad and I skipped past them to Business Class check in. We zipped through the exit tax and customs, and found ourselves in a virtually empty waiting area at the gate. It was an hour before anyone else in our group arrived. Turned out that we were very lucky to bypass the student group, who delayed everyone.

Just before we boarded, a young mother with a screaming toddler arrived. The kid was in full-throated meltdown. Dad was convinced he would scream himself quiet, but he got a second, third, and fourth wind. He obviously wasn't affected by the altitude. We just hoped he wasn't flying business.

No problems with the flight, other than we didn't get the international 757, with the cool in-seat entertainment system. We just landed in Miami, zipped through customs, and are now waiting in the Admiral's Club before we board our flight back to LA.